


A Shared Hunger

by tsunderstruck (charbroiled)



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Gen, Implied Cannibalism, Mention of Character Death, bloodless minnows, content warning: valter, feeding wyvern fish, mention of summoner, musing about war, nom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23168119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charbroiled/pseuds/tsunderstruck
Summary: Valter muses about eternal war while feeding trout to his grouchy wyvern, Hekate. Domestic bloodthirsty villain content?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	A Shared Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> I will not apologize for my Valter brainworms.
> 
> At one point in FEH Anna dropped the info that the Heroes die and are resurrected over and over again while under the Summoner's contract, and boy, Valter actually would love that, huh? I also really like the idea of his only friend being his equally horrible, gigantic man-eating wyvern. I named her Hekate because that seems on brand for our beloved seaweed-haired garbage man.

  
Hekate had been in a sour mood since her most recent death. Not unfairly so, as it was Valter's own disregard for an obvious trap which had felled them both. Sometimes death bothered her, and sometimes it didn't-- another similarity between the two of them. This last defeat had been humiliating, wings punctured in flight and finished on the ground, helpless, limbs broken from the fall.

Not the most enjoyable day, but Valter had noted the perpetrators for later retaliation. Undoubtedly Hekate had as well. The rebels he now fought alongside had been unsurprised to discover that his wyvern had a cruel streak as deep as his own.

That was half the fun of this ridiculous war, summoned by an idiot to defend a country he had no interest in. But he marked the heroes who managed to wound him, and hunted them in turn, an ouroboros of pointless, violent, satisfying retaliation. It made his mouth water-- more even than the still-wriggling bucket of trout he'd speared for Hekate. Sashimi? Was that what he'd heard it called? Satisfying to prepare and to eat...

He opened the stable door and was greeted by a rasping hiss, Hekate's red eyes flashing, wings half-unfurled, reared with irritation in her stall. Her barbed tail whipped back and forth. As though she needed the help to look intimidating. By length alone she was the largest beast in the wyvern stables, a sleek dark serpent, coiled and eager to strike. The other stocky and brightly-colored wyrms and drakes looked like a parade of clowns next to her deadly grace.

"Good morning, Hekate." She hissed again, showing fangs. Normally she would have been bobbing or shoving her head forward to be scritched roughly behind her jaw.

Valter lifted a bleeding trout by its tail. "Tsk. What an attitude to take towards your master. Here, girl. I brought you a treat."

Hekate tilted her head to peer at the fish, but pretended disinterest, wings still opened, talons still curled. He kept his distance; she could easily crush his head and shoulders in her jaws. He'd died in front of her enough times for her to understand that the Summoner could revive him-- she'd even gotten into the habit of dumping his lifeless corpse expectantly in front of that moron when they moved across the battlefield too slowly.

The idea of her mauling him and taking the remains to the Summoner like a fetch-toy was worth a chuckle, but spite-wounding her rider would be a disgraceful habit and a difficult one to rid her of if she picked it up. Perhaps it was a trick he could teach her with the opposing heroes, though… resurrected only to be hunted again… how entertaining.

He tossed the trout to Hekate and she caught and swallowed it down, then looked at him, folding her wings in just slightly. Her tail still lashed.

"Oh? I suppose you want another? Is your loyalty so easily bought?" He laughed. Hekate hissed, claws digging grooves into the gravel floor. "Oh, hush; don't pretend you don't have a sense of humor." He threw her another trout which she plucked from the air, then stepped towards him, wings folding straight against her body. Better.

"What might please you? Another day out? A hunt? Angry and restless, are we? I feel it myself."

Hekate huffed, but devoured the third trout. Her tail stilled. Better, but not yet mollified.

"Hm… what say we hunt down Gaius tomorrow? Your favorite, the one who carries the sweets. There's a portal opened to Ylisse to the south."

Her pupils widened and narrowed again-- he'd caught her attention. Her maw-- the size of his fully armored torso-- gaped, to indicate she still expected the rest of the fish. He tossed her the fourth with a snort; she snapped it from the air.

"Spoiled brat. You've a deal, though. I could use the diversion."

The fifth-- the last of the heavy fish that he'd been able to carry to the stables, save for a smaller one he was saving for himself-- she took gently from his hand, then shoved the back of her massive head into his chest with enough force to make him stumble. Her breath stank like carnage.

Valter grabbed her jaw and dug in behind the bony ridges. He knew from experience he was using enough strength to break a man's arm, yet to her it was a gentle play-wrestle which she leaned into. Marvelous beast. Tomorrow it would be a thief's corpse she crushed in her teeth.

He laughed again, and she echoed him with a fearsome chuff. How many of the heroes voiced complaints about being summoned into this endless war in a strange country, killing and dying and killing again for lords they did not know? The fools didn't know what a blessing they'd been handed. An eternal war, an endless hunt, to never suffer a lack of prey, bloodless hands or boredom! Ha. It stirred his blood and raised his spirits whenever he thought of it, even through the dullest strategic meetings.

Hekate shook herself, distracting him from the bloodsoaked reverie his thoughts had wandered into. She stepped back and rolled over, her entire body twisting into a loop, underside up for him to scratch. Oh, now she was happy, now that she was fed and promised a hunt! Valter shoved her, and her tail twitched playfully, hitting the wall hard enough to leave a dent. He threw his entire weight into rubbing her belly, kneeing her in the ribs.

She purred and curled her head behind him, resting her neck on his shoulder. He didn't see the betrayal-- only heard the clack of metal as she shoved her nose into the bucket and tipped it to drop the last fish into her throat.

He stared at her, hand still resting on her paler belly-scales. She stared smugly back with one piercing red eye, jagged maw permanently curled into a predator's grin, bucket hanging from her nose.

"...that was _my_ dinner, Hekate."

Hekate rumbled, her tail sweeping a long arc in the gravel as Valter snatched the bucket back from her. She hopped backwards and coiled onto her half-moon perch as if daring him to chase her. He swept his mussed hair behind him, scowling at the rattle of the empty bucket . "Tch. And here I'd promised you a treat tomorrow as well, greedy brute. But it would be too ironic of me to begrudge a beast her appetite, wouldn't it?"

Too late to fish again, and undoubtedly the mess hall offered some form of vegetable gruel again. This hollowness was a familiar feeling, kin to the constant urge to kill, maim, hunt, pursue, only satisfied for a short time before it gnawed at him again and drove him further.

No, he would eat tomorrow, alongside Hekate; waiting just made the pursuit that much sweeter. In their own land, they had both been famously insatiable; and here, now, where dying was mere stumbling-block … here, their hunger was eternal.  
  



End file.
